Subscribe to our Blog
Out of the Mouths of Babes
"We don't know what we are supposed to be doing, but we are learning about math," Thea Burnett, 6, said.
That just about sums up what this not-so-new fad is all about. Reading this New York Times look at another recycled blast from the progressive past will raise a few eyebrows among seasoned educators and parents who know better. What's the new experiment? Nothing more that a return to open classrooms of 60 first graders, four teachers, lots of noise, chaos, and probably not much learning going on contrary to what little Thea says. What the heck were these Brooklyn NY educators thinking, and worse, who in their right minds would allow this school? But then, I'm not surprised. Old edu-habits are hard to break. (The comments posted after the online article are also worth a read.)
Here's a sample of what New American Academy classrooms are like:
Lessons are a series of complex choreographies. In the 2,000-square-foot kindergarten, for example, each child is assigned a "university"- a grouping by skill level - and another group by color: blue, red or green. Every 40 minutes or so, the children regroup in a different part of the room. During a visit in November, an observer noticed that each move led to the children's standing up, running, talking, and then having to quiet down again.This is the hardest moment of the day," said Lorraine Scorsone, the master teacher in the kindergarten, as eight adults tried to wrangle the children into a semicircle for group reading time. "In early childhood, disengaging is very difficult, and moving to another activity is very difficult."
Ms. Scorsone, with 23 years of experience, had what appeared to be a magical touch, and the children listened raptly one day in November as she explained how a banana travels from foreign lands to local stores. But the other teachers, who do the bulk of the teaching, had more trouble gaining the attention of the children, who lay on carpets looking at the ceiling or fiddled with belts and shoelaces on the outskirts of lessons.
"Ewww," squealed a boy named Ethan when he was told that the class would plant a banana tree later that day. Other children began mimicking the sound, which they had been making earlier. "Ethan, stop it," said his teacher, Pepe Gutierrez. "I don't know why you are screaming."
The first grade was tougher, with less-experienced teachers and more children who were violent. In the first two months of school, a student pulled a chunk of an adult's hair out, and an ambulance crew was called twice to calm a child. Eight weeks into the year, the only student work visible on the blue-painted walls was a poster with finger-painted hand prints and the words "Hands Are Not for Hitting."
"Many of the children have already had a year in what I would call a state of nature, when Rousseau spoke about people who live under no civilization," Mr. Waronker said, referring to the children's experience in a regular public school kindergarten. Fifteen children still could not recognize letters, and only one-third were at grade level. "This is messy work - this is the front lines."
In the front of the room, Kathleen Kearns, a first-year teacher, strained to get her 20 students to understand how to use a chart to classify similarities and differences between two characters in a book. About half a dozen students refused to sit in their places.
"I need you here; your job is here," she said to one, trying to be heard. After class, she said, "I am exhausted at the end of the day."
"The school stresses student independence over teacher-led lessons, scientific inquiry over rote memorization and freedom and self-expression over strict structure and discipline. The founder, Shimon Waronker, developed the idea with several other graduate students at Harvard. It draws its inspiration, he said, from Phillips Exeter Academy, an elite boarding high school in New Hampshire where students in small classes work collaboratively and hold discussions around tables."
This is progressivism at its worst and it will be interesting to see how children actually achieve as time goes on. I suspect that they won't and this will be another ridiculous experiment doomed to failure.
But Mr. Waronker decided to try out the model in one of the nation's toughest learning environments, a high poverty elementary school in which 20 percent of the children have been found to have emotional, physical or learning disabilities. The idea, he said, was to prove that his method could help any child, and should be widely used elsewhere. "I didn't want to create an environment that wasn't real for everyone else and then say, look at my success," he said.
The challenges have been considerable. Faced with out-of-control classroom situations, Mr. Waronker, 42, had to rethink his idea that his model could work for even the most disturbed children. By January, three children who were violent had been moved to more-structured environments; seven other first graders moved away or withdrew, reducing the class size to 50."
Seems that more things change, the more they stay the same. Pity the children.
And I have no idea how you have come to think in the way that you have.
Thanks for this posting, it proves what I have long thought about the backgrounds of educational reformers. The comment about basing the model on an elite private school is quite telling.
Similar story behind David Warlick an education ‘guru’ making the rounds on PD Days in Ontario. He is from DC. His idea is eerily similar to Waronker’s - teachers out of the way, no structure, let the students go ahead on their own - after all, it worked for his own son who is now studying at Harvard. What caught my attention in the middle of his lecture was this statement: “When I look around my neighbourhood and think a senator lives in this house, an ambassador next to him ...” This guy obviously wasn’t from downtown DC, but the rich suburbs. I highly doubt his ideas, like Waronker’s would work in the poor neighbourhoods - and this article proves it.
However, these are the speakers that are enthralling the Ministry bureaucrats and directors of education. Little wonder we get these questionable methods presented as workable models. Furthermore, teachers and parents that question these ‘pearls of wisdom’ are considered dinosaurs and naive.